


Be all my sins remembered

by Dissenter



Series: Cry havoc [11]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Fascists, Flame Bonding, Guilt, Historical, Historical References, Implied/Referenced War Crimes, Redemption, Resistance activities, WW2, Women In Power, wartime Vongola
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:46:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22268887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissenter/pseuds/Dissenter
Summary: Tiberia brings home a former nazi as her Rain. Absolutely no-one is happy about this.
Series: Cry havoc [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/799176
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	Be all my sins remembered

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Night-Mare (Aoife)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/gifts).



> Tiberia brings home another political headache for Daniela.

No one had actually blinked when Tiberia had come back from a mission with an unconscious man in a German uniform slung over her shoulder. After all, it wasn’t the first time Ty had brought a live fascist back to base. She was rather like a cat in that respect, and so they had all just assumed she had brought him back for information extraction or target practice.

If Daniela had been paying attention then her intuition probably would have given her more warning, but she’d learned long ago that it was better not to pay too close attention to what Ty did with the mice she brought home. So it took a while for anyone to realise what had happened. It hadn’t been until he had regained consciousness that anyone had started to suspect there was something wrong. After that, a lot of things had happened in quick sucession.

The nazi woke up, the nazi turned out to be a Flame active Rain, someone tried to kill him as per the standing alliance orders regarding Flame active enemy combatants, and then Tiberia lost her temper.

Three interior walls, four items of furniture, and one rather nice Turkish carpet later, it became clear that Ty was in fact planning to keep the Nazi, and someone finally had the bright idea of calling Daniela to try and talk some sense into her.

“Really Ty?” Daniela sighed when she saw them. She could feel the bond already settling into place between the two, and of course Ty’s guardian would have to be an even political headache than she herself was. “You do realise what he is?”

“If he actually believed in what his old bosses were doing we wouldn’t be compatible, you know that as well as I do Daniela.” Tiberia said primly. 

“He’s an enemy soldier Tiberia. Compatible or not, you know this isn’t going to go smoothly.”

“Nothing ever does for us. Since when has that been enough to make either of us back off?” Never, neither of them had ever backed off because things were difficult, or because people disapproved, they couldn’t afford to, because Tiberia was right, things were _always_ difficult, and people never approved, and if they’d been the sort of people who let that stop them they wouldn’t be where they were now.

“Are you sure?” Daniela asked, even though the steel in Tiberia’s eyes had her struggling to fight back the flood of memory and she already knew the answer. Something about this moment called to mind the image of Tiberia in a bloodstained ballgown after taking her own family by force, the weeks of political manoeuvring and outright violence that had followed until her claim was secure. The truth was, they were years of blood and war too late to start bowing to popular opinion now, and so Daniela’s thoughts were already jumping ahead to how to manage the fallout of all this.

“Well, I suppose at least he might provide some useful information. If he’s yours he shouldn’t have any problem turning on his former masters.” It was a reminder, as much as a demand, that if Tiberia wanted to keep this man she had to be sure he was hers entirely, that he had no lingering loyalties to their enemies. In peacetime, they might have been able to afford divided loyalties, maybe, but they were at war and they needed to be sure of their allies.

…

“Well.” Tiberia said after Daniela left “I suppose we are a little overdue for a talk.” Her new Rain gave her a look of mildly flame drunk confusion, and she sighed, burning off a little of the Sky Flames she’d wrapped him in. “Let’s start with who you are.”

“That’s a big question.” He said, voice still slightly slurred. “Do any of us really know who we are? The nature of self can be an ephemeral concept when you think about it too deeply.” Tiberia was not amused. There was a time and place for philosophical musings, and this was neither.

“Pull yourself together soldier, I took you because your Flames were _screaming_ for a way out, and I am all too familiar with that feeling of being trapped, but if you want to complete the connection you will have to reach back. At least give me a name.” He looked at her with a flash of achingly sharp sobriety in his eyes as he asked…

“Do I have to be him still? I don’t want to be. He, I, did… terrible things, I just, I want…” There was something broken and haunted in his voice as he said it.

“I can give you a new name, if that will help, but I still need the truth from you.” He was hers, and she would Rage to keep him if she had to, but she was no Misty Sky, to allow him to keep secrets and hide from himself. If the truth was enough to break him, he wouldn’t have resonated so well with her.

“I… yes, maybe that would help.” He turned to her with a look of resolve. “Give me a new name, a new purpose, a new life like you promised and I will tell you a story about the man I used to be.” Tiberia nodded, Rains could be fragile, when they felt cast adrift, even by their own choices, and if her renaming him could anchor him, it was a simple enough concession. Besides, it was yet another thread to bind him as _hers._

“Damascus then.” She decided, after a moment’s thought, for truth, and revelations, and a path in life irrevocably changed. The symbolism of it would be good for both him and the mafia as a whole, remind them that he was no longer what he once was. “To me you will be Damascus. Now, do you have a story for me?” He needed to say it, she _knew_ he needed to say it, even if the thought of it seemed to have him right on the edge of breaking.

“I suppose I do.” He said in a falsely casual tone. “I wonder though, where should I even start. Childhood? Growing up? Why I joined the army? How I came to Italy?” He gave her a bleak empty smile. “So many ways to start on the road to damnation.” Tiberia’s face was cold as stone, she would not, could not reassure him. Her Sky could not abide weakness of heart, if he was to be hers he had to have the strength to face up to his own guilt. He paused for a moment before he continued.

“I suppose it started with good intentions. These things so often do, don’t they. I didn’t… always, know it was wrong, what the Fuhrer was doing, what my country was becoming. I don’t know that I ever… believed the stuff about lesser races and blood purity, I just never thought about it much, it was… abstract. I grew up in a small village I didn’t _know_ anyone who belonged to the lesser orders the radio kept telling us about. So I just, didn’t think about it, didn’t think about what they meant, when they said those things. I didn’t know where those ideas might lead.

I think maybe I didn’t want to know, because for the first time in so long things for my family, my village were better than they had been, and they had been very bad. As far as we were concerned, as far as we knew, our country was getting better. And then the Fuhrer declared war, and we thought, well he was right about everything else, he must be right about that too. So I joined the army, because that was what you did wasn’t it? It was the right thing, everyone said so, everyone I knew, and plenty I didn’t know. I thought, I don’t know, that I was going to be a hero.” Tiberia snorted a little at that. “Yes, yes, young boys have such foolish dreams don’t they.” He took a deep breath in an attempt to steady himself before continuing.

“So I joined the army, and at first it was, more or less like I thought. A bit more hard work, and physical training, and a bit less glory and medals than I’d imagined, but, not _wrong_ Not obviously so at any rate _.”_

“Presumably things changed.” Tiberia said, in a neutral tone, she knew he had turned against the fascists, his Flames would have told her as much even if his actions hadn’t made it clear, but she didn’t know how he’d arrived at that point.

“It wasn’t, it wasn’t a sudden thing you understand. It wasn’t like at one moment everything was fine, and then the next we were being ordered to commit atrocities. It was little things at first, prisoners that only the higher ups were allowed to talk to, attacks on positons that weren’t nearly as heavily fortified as we thought, things that were off, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on why. And then there were the rumours. Soldiers gossip, you’d hear things sometimes even if you weren’t supposed to, bad things, things other units had been ordered to do, things that were happening back home. People being taken away, because they were different, or because they spoke out, sometimes just because they tried to leave.” He didn’t look her in the eye as he spoke.

“But it was just rumours, at first, and you’d tell yourself it wasn’t true, or that it was being exaggerated, or that there was a good reason that you just weren’t important enough to hear. You’d make excuses, because you were scared, and because you didn’t want it to be true, and you’d keep making excuses as more and more of it became your truth rather than someone else’s rumour. Until you’re standing guard on the cells of innocent civilians who you _know_ are to be shot at dawn, and you aren’t even sure exactly how you ended up so far over the line.” He stopped for a moment, his voice choked with guilt.

“I haven’t been saying this right have I. I keep saying you but… that’s not right. I should say I, it was me after all, not some nebulous listener impossible to pin down. My responsibility.

I stood outside that cell, and I _knew_ the people inside didn’t deserve to die, and I was going to be complicit in their deaths, and the very worst thing, was that I knew it wasn’t the first time, and that if I stayed it wouldn’t be the last. And I knew it was _wrong,_ and I couldn’t see a way out.” He looked at her then, right on the edge of breaking.

“And then I came to rescue them.” Tiberia said.

“And then you came to rescue them, and you saved my soul when you did.” He answered, “I’m still not sure why you thought I was worth saving.”

“Because you saw that I had come to save them and you chose what was right. You chose to help, in full belief you would die for that decision.” It was strength, of a kind that Tiberia could respect, he had wanted to live, and yet he had been willing to die, because it was the right thing to do. She was under no illusions what his masters would have done to him for handing her the keys, for helping her fight her way out. If she hadn’t decided to take him, if she hadn’t felt his strength, and Fire, and _wanted_ enough to bring him home with her and damn the consequences, he would have been killed.

“I...” His attempt to argue trailed off in the face of her expression.

“You had no reason to think anyone would save you.” Even with the help he had given, it was doubtful many would have been willing to look past his uniform if he had managed to run, there was no way they could have trusted it wasn’t an elaborate plan to plant a spy in their ranks.

“But you did.” He said, “And I still don’t know why.” Later, not now when everything was so new and raw, later she would have to have a proper conversation with him about the nature of Flames, and Skies, and bonding, and how much she had learned from his Rain and how desperately tightly it had clung to her Sky. For now though it was better to try and put it in terms he could understand.

“Because you were brave, because you had the courage to admit that everything you’d ever been taught to believe was wrong, because your Flames were screaming for a way out and I know what it is to be trapped by traditions, and beliefs, and rules, that you _know_ are wrong but can’t see a way out of. Because I felt your fire, the nature of your will and I wanted you. Is that so hard to believe?”

“I don’t deserve it.” He argued.

“Then earn it.” She snapped, patience fading. “You aren’t dead yet, so use the time I’ve given you to prove me right for saving you. Help us _fight.”_ He straightened a little at the challenge in her voice, at the hope of redemption she offered, and in that moment, she knew, with all the uncanny knowing of Skies that he wouldn’t let her down.

“Well then.” He breathed, and his eyes glowed with blue Flames of resolve. “I suppose I should start with tactical information then.”

**Author's Note:**

> So this ended up focusing mostly on Tiberia, which I didn't expect, but I'm kind of pleased with how it came out. It wasn't easy, striking a balance between making Damascus sympathetic and redeemable while not excusing his actions, but I think I made it work.  
> In case you were wondering, he is a low ranked soldier stationed in Italy. He knows his government have been doing bad shit, he's been complicit in some bad shit, but he doesn't know all of the details or extent of it.  
> He's Tiberia's third or fourth guardian I think. She already has Aurelia and a couple of others but he doesn't complete the set.


End file.
